I'm not sure that's even true anymore. When I was there in 2010, there were none outside and our handlers told us they had all been chopped up. My understanding is that the statics are managed by the Naval Aviation Museum and not AMARG, though I wouldn't be surprised if AMARG is in the parts chain in there somewhere, since you still have to go through AMARG to pull something off a static for an operational aircraft.
The reason they are there is because a Squadron’s worth of B and D models were kept intact for quite some time under auspices of PMA-241 before they were stricken at which time 10 were requested by Museum Naval Aviation Museum to be kept for further disposition to museums or for static display (ie BUNO 159437 which was The VF-32 MiG killer from 1979 and requested for a potential JFK museum). The ones not saved by museum were chopped up in pieces no bigger than 5” after being harvested by SARDIP team. They are at AMARG because it costed anywhere from 50-100K to move them at the time they were stricken.
Switching gears...
@HeyJoe , you mentioned booming over Iraq, but it appears your pictures of DS are of F-14s with A-model engines. Assuming you had a combat load, how easy was it to go supersonic over the desert and not be out of gas? In the ride I got, we could barely break the number while going downhill at 30K slick, and it burned a lot of gas to do so.
Well, watching gas while supersonic is certainly advisable and RIO only has a Totalizer to monitor fuel state, but it is fairly straightforward to do with a little planning an foresight. Booming the ship (or small boys upon request) was a regular occurrence.
In Combat over Iraq, I only did it once and planned it well ahead for a TARPS mission through 6 overlapping SAM
Sites. See attached image of my chart I used which worked out to be roughly 8 min in Zone 5 burning quite a bit of gas but we tanked right up to fencing in and had a tanker waiting for us on way out. We climbed to 30K and unloaded with jet stream on our backs to 20K at the Accel mark which resulted in M1.2 with TARPS pod and missiles + ALQ-167. That was as good as we could get with so much drag.
As to the Baghdad run, we climbed to 25K and unloaded right down to 5K. Around 10K, the inlets are amazingly efficient and engines get quite a boost in that realm. You can feel it like an old 4 barrel carburetor kicking in. Not generally known because of artificiality of Training with hard deck of 10K. Not sure what altitude you were at for your good deal
Hop but it makes for a big difference.
